I glanced at my watch. “It’s a long drive and I want to make some distance before dark.” I opened the truck door, hopped up into the cab. “We’ll get together for a celebration when we can.”
“Next week, boys?” said Augie.
“Not quite,” I said. “It’s still too soon to start spending, don’t you think?”
“We need to keep in touch,” said Ben.
“Sure,” I said.
“No,” said Ben, lowering his chin in seriousness as he lowered his voice. He leaned toward the open truck door. “I don’t mean, like, saying we’ll have lunch and then letting it pass. I mean keep closely in touch.”
“I don’t know, man,” I said. “It might be hard.”
“I’m not talking long heart-to-hearts. Just check in, until we’re certain everything is over. Just to know that there have been no more break-ins and that we’re all doing okay.”
“Like saying, ‘Still here,’ right?” said Augie.
“Exactly,” said Ben. “And so we can pass on anything we see or hear that worries us.”
“I get it.”
“The thing is,” said Ben, his gaze scanning back and forth across Henrietta Road, “we’re connected by what we did. It’s like a cord between us. We’ll always be connected.”
I looked down at my two friends and was startled to realize that I was sad. We had gone our separate ways in the last year, but still I sensed even then that I would never have better friends than these two.
“Okay,” I said. “We’ll keep in touch.”
“Since Augie’s sticking around, J.J., why don’t you and I call him? Once a week, just to say hello. You’ll be our intermediary, okay, Augie?”
“You guys sure you want to trust a dopehead like me as the middleman?” said Augie.
“Sure we do,” said Ben.
“Absolutely,” I said, and Augie beamed at the responsibility in a way that made me feel like a creep.
“Okay,” said Augie. “Once a week. You can get me at home, at least until my old man kicks it. Then I think I’ll scope out Vegas.”
“Just don’t start having too much fun without us.” I shut the door, leaned out the open window. “I’ve got to go. It’s a long drive.”
“We did it, didn’t we?” said Ben softly.
“Yes we did,” I said.
“Jesus,” said Augie. “I don’t know if it’s the best thing I’ll ever pull in my life, but if it is, that’s okay with me.”
I looked at them both for a moment and my eyes grew teary as I found myself overwhelmed by sorrow, not just because I was leaving them, the best friends of my life, but also because I was leaving my childhood, leaving Pitchford. Figure that out if you want—I still can’t. But I opened the door and jumped down and gave them each a hug, Ben huge and solid like a great brown bear, and Augie thin, nervous, wriggling in my arms like a fish on a hook.
And then I hopped back into the U-Haul and drove off, away from Henrietta Road for what I knew would be the very last time, waving once as I made the turn like a goddamn movie hero on his horse. And quick as that, I was gone. But not heading straight for the highway, not yet, at least.
I took a left, and then another, and then I weaved along until I pulled into a small, barely used road that ran along the far edge of a grove of woods. I parked by the side of the road, opened the back of the truck, took out a shovel I had slipped into the corner, and headed into the trees.
I was walking through our woods, just hitting them from the other end. It wasn’t long before I found our clearing, surrounded by oaks, with the ruined stone walls and the cherry tree that had miraculously grown within the old building’s perimeter. The tree was sickly even when I first came upon it; now its bark was split, the wood peeking through was a drawn gray and infested with ants, its limbs were as leafless and dead as the arms of a corpse. All around the tree, on the stone remaining from the structure, was the ragged graffiti we had scrawled over the last eight years. AI RULES. TG SUCKS COCK. BP—89. GOD MADE WEED/IN GOD WE TRUST. JJ ♥ MW. FUCK THE WORLD. I found a rock at the base of the tree with its own rough lettering: REX—RIP. I shoved the rock aside and started digging.
The dirt was softer than you might have expected. It wasn’t long before I found the blanket I had buried there eight years before. The blanket was filthy and tattered but still intact. Inside was a bundle of bones and pale white hair. I pulled the bundle out and kept digging. A few minutes later I heard the lovely scrape of metal on metal.
With the bones of my dog back in the grave, and the stone marker back in its place, I gripped the handle of my father’s green toolbox, encrusted now with dirt and rust, and headed back to the truck. J.J. Moretti was as dead as his dog; it was time for Jonathon Willing to begin his life anew, free of the past, free of the fears, with nothing but glorious opportunity ahead of him, and rich as a goddamned king.
As I took a deep, satisfying drag from the cigarette in the basement of my George Washington at Patriots Landing, I remembered the emotions that had coursed through me then, relief and hope and possibility pure, like a clean bright light had washed out all the imperfections of my life. That my future had turned out not quite so rich didn’t diminish the power of that moment. And I was feeling some of those very same emotions now as the remainder of my stolen cash rested in the hidden compartment of my father’s green metal toolbox and I faced another escape that would save both my life and my family’s financial future. But I was also mourning the inevitable losses that had stacked up over the years: a failed marriage, an estrangement from my best friends, Augie’s murder, and now, worst of all, the necessary abandonment of my family. And so considering all I had gained and all it had cost me, the question had to be asked:
Was it worth it?
Was it ever.
And it wasn’t about the money, or only about the money. That moment when Ben and Augie and I had seized our opportunity was the bravest of my life, the boldest, and, in its way, the truest expression of the dark anarchy at the root of my soul. Everything before was as if it never existed, everything after paled in comparison. As my life deteriorated here, as my marriage crumbled and my kids turned hostile and my business disappeared and my equity cratered, the only thing that stayed solid and reliable was that moment.
And it hadn’t just changed my life, it had guided it, too. I had learned to trust it and in that trust it had given me everything. It told me to change my name and go to Wisconsin because Wisconsin was safely away from anything Pitchford, and it was in Wisconsin that I met Caitlin. It led me here, to Patriots Landing, because here I could be anonymous and safe and it was here that I raised my children and found a profession that kept me in the lucre until it didn’t anymore. And now it was telling me to change directions again and to seize the life for which everyone secretly yearned. To be free and tanned, living on a boat, living where the rest of the world could visit only on rare vacations. And there would be opportunities for me there, too, I had no doubt: new women, piles of money, adventures that would thrill me to the bone.
The opportunity I had seized twenty-five years ago was leading me now to paradise.
I took a deep drag, felt the smoke expand in my lungs, like the hot, fragrant air of the tropics. Caitlin and I had vacationed in Jamaica before Eric was born. The jungle there was too fertile to control, towers of mahogany and rosewood marching across dense mountainsides, greenery spilling down the cliffs in luxuriant waves of orchid and fern, vines reaching across the rugged roadways and past stands selling breadfruit and plantains, pineapple sliced before your eyes with heavy machetes. The verdant riot fell through the valleys, collapsed alongside breathtaking waterfalls, twisted beside still lagoons before again tumbling down in a great uprising of life toward the brilliant turquoise of the Caribbean Sea.
You know what they could have used down there? Good curbing. Like the curbs we had at Patriots Landing, meaty and thick, impervious to the wild imperfections of the lawns they restrained or the random weight of a ba
dly parked truck.
With the back of my hand I wiped a tear from my eye.
God, I would miss those curbs.
18. Last Sunday
I COULDN’T DO it.
“Well, of course you couldn’t,” said Harry. “I knew it from the start.”
“That makes one of us.”
“But that’s always the way, isn’t it? The last thing any of us ever sees clearly is his own reflection in the mirror.”
“So what do you see when you see me?”
Harry was leaning over the rear of the Left Hook, holding my boat fast to his with a grappling hook, speaking a little too loudly, which was his way. He appraised me for a moment, as if I were a piece of beef in a butcher’s counter. “A bleeder, with slow hands and sloppy footwork. A tin can full of tomatoes, sure. But not a runner.”
Which meant only that Harry was a hell of a lot more perceptive than I had been, because I saw me as a sprinter, pure and simple.
At the time of my planned demise, we had met up in the secluded cove on the James, sheltered by overgrown gorse and thick rafts of pine, the spot I had chosen to take the first steps of my escape. I would slice my arm, spill gouts of blood over the wood and cushions of my boat, put a dent in the boom with a coconut covered with my blood and bits of my hair, capsize my daysailer, and push it out into the main current of the river. The boat would flow downstream, an accident scene waiting to be discovered, while I rode upstream aboard Harry’s old wooden fisher.
I hadn’t known for sure exactly what I would do when Harry finally showed, but as soon as I saw his boat, with its filthy blue hull, its cramped white cabin, the orange rubber bumpers hanging off the side like huge versions of the red pimple balls we played with on Henrietta Road, I knew I couldn’t simply leave it all behind. The tears over the wondrous curbs at Patriots Landing were only the first clue. That very morning, with every step I had taken toward my escape I had felt ever more rooted to my life, ever more possessed by it, even with all its flaws.
Caitlin was already at the table when I entered the kitchen, the coffee was already brewed, the Times-Dispatch was already spread out on the island with the sudoku completed, the air was already thick with hostility, well earned and strangely comforting in its familiarity.
“When did you get in?” she said without looking up.
“Late.”
“You solve all his problems?”
“Not really.”
“Par for the course, right?”
“Are you blaming me for the recession, too?”
“Thad drove me home.”
“Good old Thad,” I said.
“Thad says you’re going fishing this afternoon.”
“Maybe.”
“Just be sure to explain to the kids why you keep running away from them. I’m taking a class at the gym this morning.”
“Good idea,” I said.
She looked up at me, finally. “I’m sorry about Augie.”
“Yeah.”
“But it doesn’t change our situation. You know what we talked about, that thing.”
“That thing, yeah.”
She looked down again, as if it had been the most casual of references. “Maybe sooner rather than later, okay?”
“Sure.”
That thing. Such an impersonal word to apply to separation, divorce, financial desolation, a cheap apartment at the rathole off the highway dubbed Divorcé Estates for all the kicked-out, locked-out men who lived there, Swanson frozen dinners, every other weekend looking for something, anything, to do with the kids, the soporific comfort of ball games on TV, the fruitless hopes of Match.com. My wife lifted up her mug and took a sip, still looking down at the paper, and in that simple gesture I saw the whole arc of her life with me: the young and insecure college girl she had been, the girl who had loved me truly, and the beautiful and confident woman she was now, the woman who finally had no more use for her husband.
I could win her back, with enough time and enough roses, I was sure of it. It would be hard, impossible almost after the inevitable damage of a seventeen-year marriage, but I would have liked to stick around and try. I stared as she hopped off the stool, put her mug in the sink, grabbed her purple yoga mat from off the table.
“If the kids get up, feed them,” she said before heading out to the garage without so much as a wave. As the door closed behind her, I was surprised to find myself tearing up again.
I gained a grip and finished the coffee, glanced at the paper, and then ran off to the club for a quick round of golf. The last thing I wanted was to smack a golf ball around, but Thad and Charles were expecting me and I didn’t want anything to seem out of the ordinary on Jonathon Willing’s final day on earth. Thad, Charles, and I played golf most every Sunday. We weren’t overly competitive, but we knew what was what between us. Charles, a mildly successful painter supported by his lawyer spouse, had the best golf game; I had the prettiest wife; Thad, with Campbell car dealerships all over the peninsula, had the most money. All of which meant that Thad, no matter what we shot on Sundays, was always the big winner of the three.
As my finances had deteriorated, so had my game, and golf had become something to be endured. But standing on the tee of a difficult par three that overlooked the wide James River, I imagined myself sailing down that selfsame river with Harry, sailing down that river for good, never to return to that course, that neighborhood, that life, and I felt my eyes getting wet all over again.
“Are you okay, Jon?” said Charles. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing,” I said. “Something flew in my eye.”
“You just sobbed,” said Thad. “What flew into your eye, a bat?”
“I didn’t sob.”
“Yes, you did,” said Thad. “Didn’t he?”
“He’s two down and slicing like a ninja,” said Charles. “If I were Jon, standing on the tee with all that water on the right, I’d be sobbing, too.”
“Maybe you ought to use a range ball, Jon.”
“It’s just so beautiful,” I said.
“What?”
“This hole.”
“It’s gorgeous, all right,” said Thad. “Simply breathtaking. Now hit the fucking ball.”
And I did, right into the water.
“Good,” said Charles. “Now you have something to cry about.”
Later, back at the house, after I had looked around a final time and loaded up the car with my fishing gear and the green metal toolbox, I called out for my children.
“Anyone want to go fishing?”
No answer. It wasn’t a surprise; in fact, I was fully expecting their silence, counting on it, actually. Though at one point they had each looked forward to their little trips on my little boat, that point had long passed.
“Eric?”
“Forget about it,” he shouted down from his computer.
“I promise not to talk.”
“Will you promise not to breathe?”
“I guess you’re still mad,” I said. Then I called out, “Shelby?”
“You’ve got to be kidding,” Shelby said as she passed me on her way from our vaulted family room to the kitchen.
“Why?” I said, following her. “Come on. It will be fun.”
“You’re going fishing, Dad. I don’t eat meat, and I don’t approve of one living thing killing another living thing for food.”
“Like a tomato?”
“I won’t ever participate in the barbaric hunt for a living sentient creature just so you can fillet it and fry it.”
“You don’t have to worry, I never catch anything anyway.”
“Wouldn’t it be fairer to fish for sharks while swimming? That way they could hunt you while you hunt them.”
“But not as tedious and unrewarding. Come on, sweetie, keep your old man company as he flails around on his boat.”
“I’ll find something a little more entertaining,” said Shelby, her attention now on her phone, “liking sticking pickles in my ear.” She gav
e me a dismissive wave of her hand, and then she stopped her texting and looked up at me. “Dad, are you crying?”
“No,” I said, quickly wiping my eyes.
“Jeez, Dad,” she said, giving me a strange look as she passed me. “If it means that much to you, make Eric go.”
But I couldn’t, could I? That would ruin everything. So I simply gave Shelby a final, lingering look (oh, how lovely at that moment) and went out to my car, drove out of the development, and headed to my boat. I loaded my fishing gear and the toolbox, pulled the engine to life, took the boat out on the river, and headed upstream, to my spot, and waited. And waited. Harry was late, but that was okay. I lit a cigarette and the smoke rose to my eyes and I teared up as I waited.
And then I saw the Left Hook power into the cove and it hit me like a fist in the face. I wasn’t going anywhere on that battered old boat. My life had gone into the crapper and I was in mortal danger and still I wasn’t going to end up on a sailboat in the Caribbean. For the first time since that night so long ago in the Grubbins house, I wasn’t going to let the money shove me around. I wasn’t going to be chased away from my wife, my kids, my family, my life, at least not without a fight.
“That’s the spirit, Johnny,” said Harry, lighting up a cigarette of his own. “Give ’em heck.”
“I’ll try.”
“You’ll do more than try,” said Harry. “It’s always the pug with something worth fighting for that wins it in the end. Like that ham hock Braddock with the wife and kids. He had nothing but need going for him, and he took down Baer. But look at all you got, Johnny: your family, your kids, that house you’re so proud of.”
“Don’t forget my boat.”
“I was being polite. But the wife and them kids, no one could desert a family like that.”
“My father could,” I said.
“But not you, Johnny.”
“No, not me.”
But it wasn’t because I thought Caitlin and Shelby and Eric needed me that I was staying. Just then, with all my problems, both psychological and financial, not to mention the peril I was exposing them to with my very presence, they truly would be better off without me. And the million dollars in insurance sure would come in handy come college time. And yet still I couldn’t leave them. I loved them all: my lovely wife, despite all that had come between us; my sweet daughter, despite her piercings and hostility; my boy, especially with that swing of his, flailing like a flounder at the plate. They were my anchor in the meandering sea of existence. I couldn’t imagine living my life without them, no matter how free and seasoned that new life might be.
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